NEW GEOLOGY
This series of work follows a theme of layering and distortion inspired by an interest in geology and the arbitrary way the evidence of what has passed is lost and found.
I was interested in the way the past is stored physically in the earth, the ‘deep time’ of ancient past and also the new geology that is being formed by the waste produced since modernisation. I wanted to make connections between the physical landscape of the earth and the incomprehensible way we store our personal histories in our head.
Revelations made about our history often depend on a chance discovery. Much of our past is lost. Today there is a growing concern to record and save everything.
We are becoming swamped with artefacts which we feel the need to give value to by choosing to preserve them. At the same time we are producing an infinite number of objects which are disposable and become waste instantaneously.
Images from old holiday photos evoke feelings common to many people. Forgotten faces, bare legs on the sand or in the sea merge together in an unspecific memory, hazy and incomplete. Recollections are triggered by chance encounters, smells and sounds which suddenly transport us back in time.
I have used the unpredictability of plastic under a hot air gun to emulate the randomness of discovery which determines what is revealed of the past
In a physical sense it is representative of the way that we are piling waste into landfill sites and covering them over with a decorative surface to conceal what is beneath.
